First: Some UK teachers exchanged the analogue with digital clocks. This was only to reduce interruptions by some students (during a specific kind of UK exams), who had trouble determining the remaining time in the heat of the exam battle.
Secondly: The use of analogue clocks is taught at UK schools. What’s missing is the practice that former generations of pupils had. No more wristwatches, public clocks all but gone, and (what I am nostalgically missing from my youth) no more peeking onto parked car’s dashboards to read the analogue clock there. Times have changed, and this specific partially lost ability is not the schools’ fault. (Not to say that other things aren’t…)
Can we please bury that stupid old meme, as it has been based on some inaccurate buzz and largely giving a completely inaccurate impression of the topic from the start…
Kids don’t know cursive either. Nobody needs it anymore.
I feel that learning cursive is important.
First you learn how to write ordinary letters. That trains your fine motor skills so you can write them reliably (try writing with your non-dominant yourself hand to see).
What cursive teaches you is how to write quickly. Of course, no one will write in pure, perfect cursive. Most people settle for a style somewhere in between. It teaches you the concept of “you can combine letters together to make you write faster” and “here are a bunch of ways to combine them”. It’s a good thing, Especially if they end up going to college.
Giving them a few more weeks of practice in reading and writing is a great way to avoid them being partially illiterate.
Counter point: I can write a hell of a lot faster on a keyboard if I need to take notes.
